Alibaba Invests In An Overseas E-Commerce Unit Amid Slow China Growth

(CTN News) – Despite slow domestic consumption growth, Alibaba Group is betting on its overseas businesses.

Global e-commerce revenue at Alibaba increased 44% from a year ago to 28.5 billion Chinese yuan ($4 billion). AliExpress, Lazada, Daraz, and Trendyol are part of the Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group.

A strong performance has been attributed to strong growth across all retail platforms, including AliExpress Choice cross-border.

Its core e-commerce businesses, Taobao and Tmall Group, generated revenue of $18.1 billion, a 2% growth.

It is expected Taobao and Tmall Group will invest more in improving the core customer experience in the coming year to drive business growth. Additionally, we will maintain our strong growth momentum in international commerce by developing public cloud products,” said Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group.

In addition to AIDC’s strong sales growth, losses increased year-over-year due to “increased investment in businesses, including AliExpress’ Choice and Trendyol’s international business, partially offset by improvements in monetization.”

Reorganization of subsidiaries

Alibaba and its subunits have recently changed management. On Jan. 24, Daraz replaced its CEO Bjarke Mikkelsen. James Dong, CEO of Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada Group, has been named acting CEO of Daraz. Daraz said he would “work on a deeper integration between our sister companies.”

At the beginning of January, Lazada laid off thousands of employees across Southeast Asia, including senior management. All departments were affected, including marketing, retail, and commercial.

Lazada layoffs were meant to boost organizational and business efficiency, according to Alibaba International officials familiar with the matter.

Yinglan Tan, founder and managing partner at Insignia Ventures Partners, said these recent management shake-ups have their roots in the Alibaba split last year.

ADC’s portfolio of diverse and individually complex businesses, ranging from Daraz to Lazada, also contributes. A tightening of the ship is likely to consolidate growth trajectories and de-risk operations in multiple, competitive markets,” said Tan.

Changes in leadership

Alibaba Group’s cloud business was shelved and management was shuffled in 2023.

Alibaba announced in June that Eddie Wu would succeed Daniel Zhang as CEO, so Zhang could focus on cloud intelligence. Wu is the firm’s fourth CEO since its founding in 1999. A month after Zhang abruptly left Alibaba’s cloud business unit, Wu became acting chairman and CEO. According to Reuters, Zhang expressed his desire to step down as chairman and CEO of the cloud business.

Also in December, Wu took over as CEO at Taobao and Tmall, replacing Trudy Dai. At the time, the company stated that the move ensured “significant and sustained investment” in e-commerce and cloud computing. The dominance of Alibaba is under threat from rivals including PDD, the owner of Pinduoduo and Temu.

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